The federal government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook announcement this week to cut the foreign aid budget by a further A$3.7 billion over three years is unprecedented. The current government has…

By sharing their insights and knowledge, African leaders can improve health throughout the world.
The Aspen Institute/Flickr8 December 2014

Ebola has focused the world’s attention on the challenges of health care in Africa. The continent has 11% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s disease burden. It also has just 1.3% of the global…

The country’s capacity to treat infected patients and prevent further spread is very limited.
UN Women Asia & the Pacific/Flickr4 November 2014

Contemplating how Papua New Guinea (PNG) would deal with Ebola may not be that different from asking the same of Liberia 12 months ago. While PNG’s per capita gross national income (US$2,540 in 2013) is…

Lower targets are easier to meet.
Gates Foundation/Flickr25 September 2014

During the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week, Ban Ki-Moon has convened a high-level side event on the Zero Hunger Challenge. This initiative by the UN Secretary-General bears the tag line…

West African health-care workers are overworked and under-equipped to deal with the outbreak.
European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr25 September 2014

Too slow. Too little, too late. Unprecedented. Out of control. These are just some of the descriptors for the biggest recorded epidemic of human infection by an ebolavirus. The question by some is how…

Major pharmaceutical companies have shown little interest in developing effective treatments for illnesses such as Ebola virus disease.
AAP Image/David Crosling19 August 2014

Ebola virus disease typically only occurs in rural and remote areas among resource-poor populations. Until the large, recent outbreak in West Africa, cases of the illness were a rarity. So the fact that…

Our understanding of Ebola has increased considerably since outbreaks of a mysterious haemorrhagic fever caused by an unknown virus first occurred in Southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo…

Authorities are rapidly trying to stop the spread of Ebola.
Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA30 July 2014

It is 6am on a warm West African morning. Two men, Ahmed and Milton, are up early, getting ready for long journeys. Apart from that they have little in common. Ahmed is a high-ranking official in the Ministry…

Medical tourism is often associated with an image of sun, sand and surgery; patients travelling mostly from rich countries in the global North to exotic destinations for medical treatments at a lower cost…

The global HIV epidemic has been unprecedented, both in its extent and in the way it has changed the world’s approach to health funding. Over the last ten to 15 years, large sums of money have for the…

The most comprehensive global study ever undertaken for obesity was just released and the need for serious population-wide action is no longer up for debate. The study’s key findings make for grim reading…

A child is vaccinated against polio during a three-day nationwide campaign to eradicate polio, in Karachi, Pakistan, May 2014.
EPA/SHAHZAIB AKBER21 May 2014

For many people in the UK, tuberculosis is a disease that’s been out of sight, out of mind for a number of years. Although it is low and middle-income countries that bear the burden of TB-related sickness…

Tuberculosis, or consumption as it used to be known, sounds like a disease that we’ve managed to fight off for good. But a drug-resistant strain of the bacteria that causes it is making a comeback, and…

Many women and children in poor countries still die, or suffer serious ongoing disability, for reasons that are entirely preventable. What’s more, developing countries face an emerging “epidemic” of non-communicable…

Bangladesh: a melting pot of past, present and future.
Saud A Faisal21 November 2013

Chinggis Khaan (or as he is known in many countries, Genghis Khan) is Mongolia’s national hero. The famous 12th and 13th century leader used considerable military and political savvy to build one of the…